MySpace is Like Catnip for Teenagers

I signed up for a MySpace account a couple months ago and haven’t really been all that impressed. I’ve found their service to be a little intrusive. The site is bombarded with ads and every time I log in they want to ask me questions about who I am and what my juicy demographic information is. The tradeoff for me is that they can “share” this info with my friends. While I appreciate their concern I suspect that they are more concerned about sharing my info with their friends.

While I would never recommend the service it turns out that MySpace is like catnip for teenagers. The service is signing up over 180,000 people a day and they now have a staggering 47 million user accounts. An unbelievable accomplishment considering that they had 26 million ‘friends’ just 3 and a half months ago. Rupert Murdoch originally bought the company for $580 million in July 05′ and it’s beginning to look like he might have gotten a pretty good deal. Alexa currently ranks the company as the 13th busiest site on the internet and the company is continuing to expand as a social networking portal.

You can love or hate Rupert Murdoch, but you have to admire his internet saavy. He has been able to add over 20 million subscribers since he took over the company 7 months ago and he’s managing to grab a very valuable demographic while doing so. While I might not be able to understand these whacky kids today, it certainly appears that Murdoch does.